


pre flight check

by silentwalrus



Series: snackfic [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Airplanes, Getting To The Airport, M/M, Steve Rogers Is A Working Professional
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-30 02:57:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15087476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentwalrus/pseuds/silentwalrus
Summary: Steve and Bucky: getting to the airport.





	pre flight check

**Author's Note:**

> Newsbypostcard keeps posting these lovely little snack ficlets on tunglr and i just had to join in

Steve started doing design work again as a favor, but since that favor was to Pepper Potts, things got out of hand pretty quickly. He works under a fake name but people just seem to _know._ It gives him a _lot_ of leeway - Steve kind of wants to tell people he never got beyond junior anything and treating him like a visionary tastemaker is, perhaps, a mistake - but sometimes it’s necessary. Like now. When it’s been _many_ hours and _nothing_ is working and _colors are no longer real._

He’s abandoned the tablet and reverted to markers, because after his file versions hit the double digits he felt the call of the wild echoing in his ears. He’s positive his brain is bending in half. Up is down and dark is light. He’s starting to understand why Van Gogh ate paint. It wasn’t because of depression or wanting the color inside of him or anything, it was because _the fucking layouts didn’t look right._

The door to the studio opens. “You up already? I’m…” Bucky trails off.

"What?"

Bucky surveys the carnage. “Did you go to bed at all?”

“What?”

“We have a flight in two hours,” Bucky says mildly.

It occurs to Steve that Bucky is dressed to navigate the outside world. He looks simultaneously like the kind of gentleman who doesn’t give a damn how he looks and yet also like he has a separate insurance policy for his shoes. Steve suspects _he_ looks like a scarecrow marinated in sweat. 

“The flight is to our vacation,” Bucky continues. “Our sixteen-day, international vacation. Which you coerced me into. Are you even packed?”

Steve stares at him, then inexorably returns his gaze to the scattered acreage of paper on his desk. Pencils and markers make for the occasional fungoid bulge. When he’d started there had been daylight, and… now there’s daylight again. Almost, anyway. The light coming from the still-open window is almost the same slate grey as Bucky’s eyes, which, yes, Steve _had_ tried grey already but there was just only so much you could do when you were trapped by a core color scheme that looked like the vomit of a mutant clown - 

Bucky snaps his metal fingers right by Steve’s ear, making the loudest most unpleasant _SCHLICK_ sound in the world. Steve jumps a mile. 

“Five minutes,” Bucky says, pointing. “Starting now. Shower. _Go.”_

Steve goes. 

Fifty-one minutes later they’re standing to the side of the security line, waiting for the TSA guards to figure out what to do with the folder of State Department papers Bucky handed them. Steve is holding two coats, one backpack and five bags, two of them quite large. Bucky is holding an iced coffee. Steve wishes he knew when that’d happened, given the adrenaline kickstart is wearing off some, but he can’t rule out that Bucky made it materialize from sheer force of will. 

The TSA agents keep looking back and forth between them and the papers. There’s a lot of whispering. Bucky gives them a friendly smile, with lots and lots of teeth. He no longer takes off his sunglasses when inside any building that isn’t their apartment. Steve wishes he knew what was on the papers, or, for that matter, what’s in any of these bags.

Eventually what looks like the manager comes out. Steve’s not sure if these agents have superior officers or just a guy with a different uniform who gets paid more. He’s spiralling into the philosophical question of what the difference is when the whispering stops, the papers get shuffled together, and the superior manager respectfully nods them through.

Bucky bypasses the barricade of security scanners with a self-assurance too refined to be called smug. The cup-rattling slurp of coffee as he passes the head agent is probably purely incidental. 

Steve lumbers after him. “What did you do?” 

“Registered your arms and legs as deadly weapons,” Bucky says. 

“Ah.” 

“And some other parts.”

"Oh.”

“Not your head, though.” 

"Hey,” Steve says feebly, but by the Bucky is already breezing ahead to the rows of shops that line the terminal. 

They board the plane at the head of the line. They’re flying first class, apparently. Steve cantilevers himself into the aisle seat as Bucky goes to the bathroom and probably manages to see inside the flight attendants’ compartments, carry-ons and innermost souls on the way. When he sits he taps an absent-minded clear onto Steve’s bicep and settles down beside him, lifting the dividing armrest to knock their knees together. 

Steve tries to get comfortable in a seat narrower than the breadth of his shoulders. Bucky beckons for his backpack and takes out his knitting. Natasha gave him the needles. They look kind of like if railroad spikes went on a diet and then to assassin school. The yarn, on the other hand, looks like rotting seaweed that got run through a spaghetti maker. Steve dreads the day he’s going to have to put whatever it is on whatever part of his body Bucky decides deserves it. 

He’s just dozing off, the plane rumbling as it taxis to takeoff, when the hazy cotton wool settled comfortably over every aspect of his critical thinking abruptly resolves into searing clarity. He sits bolt upright - Bucky reflexively stabs the seat with one needle, then smacks Steve’s thigh in censure - but Steve’s already scrabbling furiously for a piece of paper and some kind of drawing utensil. 

_“What,”_ Bucky demands.

 _“Paper,”_ Steve says desperately. 

“Why!” 

“The layout. I got it. Quick, before it gets away -”

Bucky sighs, pulls a Sharpie out of his pocket and slides the in-flight magazine in front of Steve as he puts the marker in his hand.

Steve descends on the hapless magazine like a plague of wasps with art degrees. Halfway through his furious scribbling a second, equally momentous thought thunderbolts through the haze. He leans over, kisses Bucky on the cheek and says, “Thank you.” 

“Just draw, Rogers,” Bucky says, but when he sits back with his knitting his cheeks are faintly pink. 

**Author's Note:**

> brought to you by: me standing in the fucking boarding line desperate to pee

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [(Podfic) Pre Flight Check](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15909048) by [PashminaChinchilla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PashminaChinchilla/pseuds/PashminaChinchilla)




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